Apple, Samsung CEOs once again fail to reach pre-trial agreement on patents

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung's Vice Chairman Choi Gee-sung and mobile chief Shin Jong-Kyun have once again reportedly failed to come to an agreement on their now long-standing patent dispute during a second round of court-mandated settlement talks. Citing several sources familiar with the talks, Dan Levine and Poornima Gupta, writing for Reuters said:

Apple believes [FRAND] patents should be valued lower due to those dynamics, one of the sources said. Additionally, Samsung believes it has a stronger patent portfolio than Apple when it comes to next-generation technology like 4G, the source said.

FRAND patents are supposed to be licensed under "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminate" terms in exchange for their being adopted as essential standards in a technology. Apple chooses to keep their patents proprietary and not license them, rather than to have them become part of a standard. Some courts and government regulators have taken issue with FRAND patents being used to sue or counter-sue against non-FRAND patents and, in the EU, ant-trust investigations have begun looking into them.

This was at least the second court-mediated settlement talk to fail. While Apple and Samsung continue to sue each other over patents, and whether or not Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad, or Apple violated core Samsung technologies, Apple remains Samsung's largest customer, sourcing numerous components from Samsung's manufacturing division.

If Apple and Samsung can't reach an agreement, the case will go to court and then it'll be out of their hands. Since courts have varied widely in patent decisions of late, from tosses cases out of court to issuing injunctions, what happens next will be hard to predict. Except for the amount of time and money spent by all parties involved.

I'm still calling for Judge Judy to step in and settle everything in 30 min of snark.